Musical ramblings from the manager
If the 11th Annual Porcupine Mountain Music Festival was scored like a baseball game, the box score would read: A lot of runs, hundreds of walks, one error, and no weather delays. Some weather was evident on the radar Friday evening, but the two storms passed north and south of the festival grounds. The […]
Remember when rock musicians wanted to make a difference? Well, they still do, there are a lot of charitable things being done by today’s musicians – here is a little throw back to the big hair metal days of 1985 – too bad many of the singers shown are no longer with us! Below is […]
Anyone remember the the game “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon?” It essentially follows that any actor one can think of can be connected to actor/musician Kevin Bacon in six or less steps (or degrees, if you will). It is an adaptation of the old parlour game that says that any two people on Earth are […]
Playing in a band is fun. At times, it is also a lot of work, but once the gig is on, it is a lot of fun. When I was gigging regularly and people would ask, “Hey, what are you doing for New Year’s Eve?”, I liked to tell them, “I’m working.” If they expressed […]
I started on the topic of keyboard players a while back and began making a mental note of the ones who stood out in my mind. Never try and make a mental list that encompasses nearly 50 years of concert and album memories. I am probably going to have to get one of those ‘on-board […]
Drummers and bass players always appreciate each other because they are the foundation in most bands. Without any disrespect to the four and six string guitar slingers out there, I have also always enjoyed my encounters with keyboard players. My fascination with keyboards may be rooted in my abandonment of piano for the drums way […]
What qualifies as a ‘character’? We all have character, so technically, the term applies to anybody. For the purposes of this article, we will define a ‘character’ as someone with some unique trait or traits that make them, for lack of a more appropriate description, memorable. Naturally, this could open the door to a list […]
National Public Radio has a series called ‘Tiny Desk Concerts’ posted on the internet and they are a source of some interesting insights into musicians from a broad spectrum of genres. The concept is a bit strange: invite a musician to perform in an office and film it as a live, interactive interview. I first […]
There was a twenty year window that opened around 1965 when a lot of great, nationally known bands made their way to Marquette. Living as I did across the street from the Northern Michigan University campus and within sight of Hedgecock Fieldhouse (where most concerts were held before Lakeview Arena was built), all I had […]
It is a great philosophy: K.I.S.S. Engineers use it. Mechanics use it. Mathematicians use it. Even coaches use it. Keep It Simple, Stupid. It is a self admonishment to anyone trying to solve a complex problem or fix a broken widget that (usually) the simplest solution is (usually) the best solution. Oh, we […]